NY drivers license

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Perry Winkle

Right. Imagine you're a businessman that runs a lawn service firm. You can't get the labor you need, so you pick up undocumented migrants for less pay than the citizens you can't find to work for you.

If you're dumb or in dire need, you let these unlicensed drivers operate your equipment (e.g. driving a truck to a job-site). You eat the costs of any accident: equipment replacement, increased insurance costs, et cetera.

If these people could be licensed then any accident is covered by insurance, and your income goes up because you aren't losing so much money to equipment replacement (you might lose time and jobs, too, because you can't afford to replace all of the equipment). This extra revenue is then taxed by the government, and the rest of the community benefits (or wherever the taxes go).

To many false assumptions. This is the list of false assumptions:
1. You let these unlicensed drivers operate your equipment and they have accidents that affect your bottom line of profit. There is no evidence to support that notion, or that there is a rash of such situations that this is the norm.
2. If these people could be licensed then any accident is covered by insurance, and your income goes up because you aren't losing so much money to equipment replacement Part of the reason this is false is contained in #1. There is no evidence to support the notion that by giving a license to undocumented workers is going to ensure that employers are going to suddenly cover them for insurance and let them drive more. There is no evidence to support the notion that employers are losing money due to undocumented workers wrecking equipment or destroying any equipment that would need to be replaced and that such actions are costing employers huge amounts of money.
3. This extra revenue is then taxed by the government, and the rest of the community benefits (or wherever the taxes go). There is no evidence to support that because undocumented workers get a drivers license that their pay will suddenly become taxed or that any such revenue would be realized by the public.

So basically everything you stated as an example is total bullshit.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Driving is not a right, it is a privelege... if you don't believe that, just ask the state, any state.

So now privileges are granted to criminals, in NY.

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

So now privileges are granted to criminals, in NY.

If it's a net positive, why not?

Where are the arguments for this being a negative? (I'm actually curious, not just being a smart-ass. I'm sort of disconnected from what's happening in the US right now. . . I'll be happy to go retrace my steps and find the links that helped me formulate my opinions, if anyone is interested.)

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Perry Winkle

If it's a net positive, why not?

If you want a net positive, put a bounty on their heads.

[Perry Winkle]

My phrasing wasn't the best. I wasn't trying to imply any universality in the mechanics of my examples. That's kind of why we call them examples. They are anecdotes, thought experiments, etc. I meant my examples to be read as loose analogies, not as a strict exemplar.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

To many false assumptions. This is the list of false assumptions:
1. You let these unlicensed drivers operate your equipment and they have accidents that affect your bottom line of profit. There is no evidence to support that notion, or that there is a rash of such situations that this is the norm.
2. If these people could be licensed then any accident is covered by insurance, and your income goes up because you aren't losing so much money to equipment replacement Part of the reason this is false is contained in #1. There is no evidence to support the notion that by giving a license to undocumented workers is going to ensure that employers are going to suddenly cover them for insurance and let them drive more. There is no evidence to support the notion that employers are losing money due to undocumented workers wrecking equipment or destroying any equipment that would need to be replaced and that such actions are costing employers huge amounts of money.

Actually, that's one "false" assumption, i.e., I assumed that if you employ certified people then your insurance will cover them. I'm sure it's true to some degree. The reasoning of my examples is valid if this holds. Uninsured losses affect a company's bottom line.

I never made any statements about the frequency or magnitude of losses due to damage by unlicensed, undocumented migrants. I believe we can safely assume that both are significantly non-zero.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

3. This extra revenue is then taxed by the government, and the rest of the community benefits (or wherever the taxes go). There is no evidence to support that because undocumented workers get a drivers license that their pay will suddenly become taxed or that any such revenue would be realized by the public.

I never said that the pay of undocumented migrants would be taxed. I said that the companies that are realizing the profit from their work would be taxed. I also never said that the public would necessarily reap any benefit from this tax revenue.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

So basically everything you stated as an example is total bullshit.

Yeah, and so is 90% of everything else that everyone says.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Perry Winkle

Originally Posted by TheMercenary
So basically everything you stated as an example is total bullshit.

Yeah, and so is 90% of everything else that everyone says.

At least we agree on that much.